Historically, it has proven difficult to effectively and efficiently remove substantial amounts of floating debris, or contaminants, from the ocean and other bodies of water. Some variables that may hinder such recovery efforts include the large amount of debris often needed to be recovered, the different types of debris, the rapid speed at which the debris spreads, the effect of wind, waves, rough seas and other environmental factors on the recovery operations and the limited size and/or capacity of existing recovery vessels. Presently available debris recovery vessels and techniques are thus believed to have one or more limitations or disadvantages.
For example, presently known vessels being used or promoted to collect waterborne debris are typically unable to efficiently and/or effectively collect different types of debris. For another example, in the offshore and inland waterway oil spill recovery arena, various existing oil skimmers are believed to be unable to recover large volumes of oil. Many and perhaps all known systems cannot separate out significant amounts (or any) of the collected oil from sea water, resulting in limited on-board oil storage and, thus, oil recovery capacity. In fact, many existing systems cause further emulsification of the oil and water and thus cannot return separated water back to the sea or other body of water, limiting on-board oil storage capacity, increasing cost and time, etc. Other existing oil skimmers attempt to separate the recovered oil from sea water, but are slow and thus largely ineffective at recovering substantial volumes of oil.
It should be understood that the above-described features, capabilities, limitations and disadvantages are provided for illustrative purposes only and are not intended to limit the scope or subject matter of the appended claims or those of any related patent application or patent. Thus, none of the appended claims or claims of any related application or patent should be limited by the above discussion or construed to address, include or exclude each or any of the above-cited features, capabilities or disadvantages merely because of their mention above.
Accordingly, there exists a need for improved systems, apparatus and methods useful in connection with debris recovery operations having one or more of the attributes or capabilities described or shown in, or as may be apparent from, this patent.